National Institute of Health & Family Welfare (NIHFW) is an Apex Technical Institute, funded by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for promotion of Health and Family Welfare programmes in the country through education, training, research, evaluation, consultancy and specialised services. NIHFW was established on 9th March, 1977 by merger of National Institute of Health Administration and Education (NIHAE) and National Institute of Family Planning (NIFP).

The National Institute of Health and Family Welfare is an apex technical institute of public health and family welfare in the country aiming to achieve wellbeing and vitality of the Indian people. The Institute has been addressing a wide range of issues on public health and family welfare management by its multi-disciplinary functions in the form of research, consultancy, education and training interventions for last more than three decades. In-service training of middle and senior level health professionals, and research have been the two major concerns of its mandate. It has been identified by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as the nodal institute for supervision, analysis and country report writing of 'Annual Sentinel Surveillance for HIV Infection', coordinating in-service training under National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) with the support of eighteen collaborating training institutions and to conduct ten weeks 'Professional Development Course in Management, Public Health and Health Sector Reforms for District Medical Officers' in collaboration with State Institutes of Health and Family Welfare and Central Training Institutions.

The Institute has a long history and reputation as one of the centres in the area of reproductive health care. Technology development in reproductive bio-medicine was a great
milestone of the year 2008-2009. Two technologies on sperm function tests (nuclear chromatin decondensation and sperm acrosome status tests) have been transferred
on 26th February, 2008 to a private industry, Cryo Cell India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. The technology transfer was arranged by National Research Development Corporation
(NRDC) as per the MOU signed between NIHFW and NRDC on June 2007.